350 A BRIEF MEMOIR 



who had been connected in business with CoL 

 Kelsall before the revolution. I have heard that 

 governor Tatnal, then a young man, gave his 

 seed to Mr. Nicholas Turnbull, lately deceased, 

 who cultivated it from that period successfully. 



I know my father planted his cotton seed in 

 the spring of 1787, upon the banks of a small 

 rice field, on St. Simon's Island. The land 

 was rich and warm, the cotton grew large and 

 blossomed, but did not ripen to fruit; it how- 

 ever ratooned, or grew from the roots the 

 following year. The difficulty was now over, 

 the cotton adapted itself to the climate, and 

 every successive year from 1787, saw the long 

 staple cotton extending itself along the shores 

 of Georgia, and into south Carolina, when an 

 enlightened population, then engaged in the 

 cultivation of Indigo, readily adopted it. 



All the varieties of the long staple, or at least 

 the germ of those varieties came from that seed; 

 differences of soil developed them ; and differ- 

 ances of local situations are developing them 

 every day. The same cotton seed, planted on 

 one field, will give quite a black and naked 

 seed ; while the same seed, planted upon 

 another field, different in soil arid situation, 

 will be prone to run into large cotton, with 



